The spread of agriculture into northern Central Asia: Timing, pathways, and environmental feedbacks

Over the past decade, researchers have directed greater focus toward understanding Bronze (3200–800 BC) and Iron Age (800 BC–AD 400) economies of Central Asia. In this article, we synthesize paleobotanical data from across this broad region and discuss the piecemeal archaeological evidence for agriculture in relation to environmental records of vegetation and climate change. The synthesis shows that agricultural products were present in northern Central Asia by the mid-3rd millennium BC; however, solid evidence for their spread even further north into the Altai Mountains and southern Siberia only comes from the late 2nd and early 1st millennia BC. The earliest crops introduced into Central Asia likely came as a mixed package of free-threshing wheat, naked barley, and broomcorn millet, an assemblage pioneered further south along the northern foothills of the Central Asian mountains. Further east, in Mongolia, and debatably to the west of Central Asia, in the steppe of northern Kazakhstan and the southern U...